Show Ready Reviews

When the tracks choose to play, this is a useful tool. The problem is that ShowReady is so buggy that I can barely get through a tune. If it just plays from start to finish, it seems to be ok, but if there are many jump cues at all, ShowReady just can’t keep up. I’ll adjust the tempo of certain sections, and it works for a while, but then ShowReady freezes, and when you close it to restart, the tempo changes are gone. If this were not the only option we were given for the show we’re doing, I would certainly not use ShowReady.

The controls at the bottom aren’t usable as only the very top of them shows on the screen. App would be fine if they would fix this to support phones with a notch. Have to use it on my iPad as is.

So many bugs not worth getting.

There are no vocal tracks to follow along with. This makes teaching choreography incredibly difficult because they have to know all the music first. I’m very disappointed. You should avoid this at all costs.

Everytime I’d try to do things in ShowReady it would freeze and sometimes the audio will freeze and you have to press play again. This is not a good app. Teachers please don’t use ShowReady.

Dear App Creators,

I started downloading this silly little app around 6am checking it CONSTANTLY for progress. ANY SORT OF PROGRESS, none until around 12am the next day. I find it absolutely baffling that this download was more of a wreck than my audition for the play that I need ShowReady for. It is astounding that I am the first person to write a review for ShowReady in YEARS. This lack of attention demonstrates that ShowReady shouldn’t be on the market. I recommend ShowReady creators either revisit ShowReady and it’s downloading time or delete it all together and do us all a favor.

Much love, Amara Buelk

ShowReady often freezes. I have to swipe out of it and restart multiple times. If I switch over to a different app on my phone, when I come back to ShowReady, it shuts down and I have to re-open. As a music director, this is a frustrating waste of rehearsal time.

It’s fine when it works, but many times when you click to go out of a vamp, repeat, cesura, etc it will glitch and ShowReady will completely freeze, needing a complete reboot. Very frustrating!! Better than no app but still have used much better apps than this

This review is for the iPad version. The UI is crowded with admin features that most users won’t need—or even have access to. There’s no ability to loop, so practicing passages requires manually dragging the progress slider back every time, not great for steady practice. It’s hit or miss to set the slider accurately.

Every now and then ShowReady freezes for no reason and requires a reboot. At other times there’s a low bass buzzing that only goes away with a reboot.

It’s better than no rehearsal app, but I I’ve used much better rehearsal apps.

Pretty much a glitchy disaster. Often freezes in the middle of a piece and needs to be restarted. Worst for me is that for no apparent reason music stops playing and all I can hear is the “click track”. I have to delete ShowReady and reinstall to fix this. Already 4 times in just a couple weeks!!

ShowReady is kinda helpful when it works. I find it somewhat useful for rehearsing the tracks. However, it often freezes and needs to be restarted. Or the part mute/solo buttons don’t work and need to be toggled on and off repeatedly. My biggest pet peeve is that the tab bar at the top hides a lot of the important information at the top of the screen in iPadOS 18. If the tab bar could be moved back to the bottom of the screen, ShowReady would be much more usable.

Who knows, maybe the desktop version is better. I haven’t messed around with it yet. But in the 20 minutes I have been working with ShowReady on my 2020 iPad Pro, I have had it crash on me seven times, freeze twice, and play glitchy low notes after exiting vamps, sometimes followed by a freeze. The vamps seem to be the biggest culprit, causing ShowReady to hard crash.

Additionally, the tracks so far are…disappointing. They sound like 30-year-old General MIDI files, and the sound fonts and sequencing are sorely lacking. They’re accurate to the score, yes, but they’re mechanical and dry. For rehearsal tracks, that’s not necessarily a huge problem (I understand the performance tracks are better), but I do feel it worth mentioning. Additionally, when vamping, there are some significant MIDI timing issues causing audible stutters and jitter.

The idea is solid, that’s the thing. Being able to follow along in the score is a nice touch, and the ability to change the sound font used for each voice is great for learning multiple parts. But the company clearly did not allocate the proper time or resources to develop a functional tablet version of ShowReady, which is a shame in a world in which tablets are increasingly being used for playback. These features, buried underneath the rampant stability problems, are the reason I’m rating two stars and not just one.

I’ve been working in MIDI and playback for theatre for several years now, and am a firm believer in its potential. The technology is out there to create wonderful rehearsal and performance tools for organizations on a budget, and this application could be one such tool if—and only if—the debilitating stability and jitter issues are fixed.

ShowReady is horrible it is glitchy and I have never seen a worse app. This is not too good but I will say it kind of works but ShowReady does not keep me show ready

It’s better than nothing when trying to practice material, but not much better. It’s very very buggy in a ton of ways, and not user friendly at all. But it is still better than nothing.

Great for teaching students when you aren’t a great pianist. New bug issues- even when the piano/vocals aren’t muted ShowReady will randomly mute everything and only give you the click. And I HATE that the new update doesn’t show you the song title you’re on in the play. All mode, you have to back out to song list to make sure you’re on the correct piece. A great tool, but a couple user friendly bug fixes are needed.

My friends use it and they say it works great, but none of the buttons that should appear at bottom of screen are there for me. I tried reinstalling it and it was still the same. I wish I could show an image of it for you to see

This is for the iPhone app. It works fine until it doesn’t. It disappears off my phone entirely at random times and has to be reloaded. It will crash often if you try to go back and do a song again; you’ll need to close out and reload app.

I keep having this issue where at specific, bot random, but when i get to a specific measure on half the songs the song starts coming in and out and then ShowReady closes. Is there a way to fix the issue?

ShowReady is good. I haven’t tried it yet though

this is a working app